


pieces of peace

by thelabours



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, M/M, Multi, for HQ OT3+ week, i'm clearly not very creative, no dialogue we fic like men, skippable don't worry i gotchu fam, this was day 6 (any au), tw: anxiety attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 10:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10829841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelabours/pseuds/thelabours
Summary: their lives are stitched together with moments like these, quotidian and routine.





	pieces of peace

**Author's Note:**

> to skip the anxiety attack (worry not, it is mild and- they are fine now dw !!- very skippable):
> 
> skip from " **Koutarou had fled...** " to " **...the slam of a door** "
> 
> (special thanks to saz and sush for helping out with the small stuff, y'all are the real MVPs)

It’s hard to say who’s up first in the mornings.

Koutarou wakes up first for his morning run. He carefully eases off the bed and all at once Kenma and Tetsurou roll over to fill in the warm empty space. Koutarou cracks a smile and makes his way to the bathroom, trying not to let the furniture injure his shins. He doesn’t account for the fact that he has toes and only barely contains his scream when his pinky toe catches on the coffee table. He brushes his teeth and takes a shower to wake himself up. He kind of misses Keiji these mornings because he usually has a pot of coffee brewing by now. Sleep and Keiji are best friends and only coffee, evil mistress, can tear them apart. Koutarou ties his laces and shuts the curtains and leaves forehead kisses on Kenma (who cracks an eye open and grumpily tells him to take an umbrella to work) and Tetsurou (who sleeps like the dead until the alarm on his phone wakes him up). He slips out unnoticed, humming a jovial tune to himself.

Tetsurou wakes up next, tumbling off the bed when Kenma kicks him. The alarm is too loud and Tetsurou looks around wildly before he switches it off. He almost goes back to sleep on the ground when he realises it’s 7 am and he has class in half an hour. Scrambling off the ground, he dumps all the blankets on Kenma, and shivers all the way to the bathroom. He gags a little at Koutarou’s lingering cologne. Somehow, he manages to shove some toast in his mouth and gather all his books. He comes in to say goodbye to Kenma (who has disappeared under the mountain of blankets) and leaves to catch the bus to the college. 

Kenma would argue that he is the first one up mainly because he didn’t go to bed until the wee hours of the morning. He would argue, except he’s asleep. He wakes up half an hour after Tetsurou is gone. He wakes up, but doesn’t want to leave his cocoon of warmth and comfort. He checks his phone and replies to certain messages ( _good morning Kenma!!!! Its my first day of work today wish me luck!!!!_ and _I’ll be home around 10, tell Kou to take an umbrella to work_ ). He gets up at ten past eight and shuffles out to bed. He eyes the pot of coffee distrustfully. He doesn’t like the way it looks when Tetsurou makes it (all black with no cream because they forgot to buy any) and puts on the kettle. He makes a mental note to thank Keiji when he finds Darjeeling tea in the cupboard and sits down with some toast and jam. He spots the green umbrella in its stand and thinks _Kou will miss it_. At half past nine, he takes a walk to the café with his laptop and works from there. The emptiness of the house is more foreign now that he knows what sounds it makes when people are in.

Kenma comes back home right before Keiji does. Keiji interns at the hospital nearby and takes on night shifts twice a week. Therefore, he says, somewhat triumphantly, that he’s up before anyone else. It’s cold outside and Kenma puts the kettle on for a second round of tea for Keiji and himself.

In these quiet moments, Kenma adores his life and the people that make it worthwhile. He likes to think about when they first met each other, where they come from and how they’re a family now. He knows Keiji comes from a rich family, and Koutarou comes from a large one. He knows Tetsurou only has his mother after his father left them and never looked back, and Kenma himself used to go back and forth between his divorced parents like the pendulum of a grandfather clock that had forgotten how to keep time.

He thinks about how much this small house means to him, with its peeling green wallpaper and cracks on the ceiling and broken taps and frosted windows. Kenma doesn’t like the cold or the wallpaper but Koutarou has enough fairy lights and Tetsurou has his posters so they make it work. Keiji, man of wonders, fixes the tap whenever he has the time. 

The kettle hisses. Kenma carefully pours the tea out. Keiji is drooling on Tetsurou's copy of _The Feynman Lectures_ and Kenma wants to freeze this moment forever.

He gently shakes him awake and they drink in silence. Keiji kisses Kenma good morning and goes to bed. He’d wake up around the time Tetsurou gets home from the library.

Kenma picks his laptop up and pads to the bedroom where Keiji is sound asleep under a mountain of ugly blankets. He is thankful because, as Tetsurou jokes, Kenma is living his dream job—he works from home as a video game tester, a beta for ones that have yet to hit the shelves. He doesn’t buy them, he doesn’t have the money to and nor does he want to. They’re all the same these days. He’d much rather play pokemon or something.

He puts the rice in the cooker, a little extra if Keiji wakes up for lunch, and decides that today is not laundry day.

Keiji does wake up for lunch, with dried drool on his cheek and they eat white rice and warmed up miso in silence, both not good with words, but then again, between them, words aren’t all that important. Keiji goes back to sleep and Kenma puts on five layers of thermal wear before setting out to buy something for dinner. 

Tetsurou comes home first, slightly drenched and very cold, just in time to see Keiji finish brewing a pot of coffee. It’s different when Keiji makes it, dark and rich, exceptional, really, how they get such different results when they’re using the same beans. He takes his shoes off and stretches, and Keiji smiles a special smile at him and suddenly he’s all warmed up inside.

When Koutarou comes home (mightily drenched), he’s tired after a long day of coaching children with endless energy, but not tired enough to pick Tetsurou and Keiji up in bone-crushing hugs. He tells them a story about one of the maths teachers at work (“ _no, he really did drop coffee all over the principal!_ ") when Kenma comes home with cans of beer and fried chicken and is subject to the same bone-crushing hug treatment. The others welcome him home with smiles.

They don’t really fight but Kenma remembers once, last winter, Tetsurou and Keiji had argued over something trivial—the laundry? Kenma doesn’t remember, but it had been finals week for them both and tempers had been lost. Cutting words had curled in on them like snakes, venom had been spat and had burned them. In the beginning, Keiji and Tetsurou had conflicting opinions most of the time, but they were civil enough to keep them under wraps. They got along worse than Koutarou and Kenma did. They had roomed together because money was tight and they were acquaintances and what better choice did they have, so far away from home?

Koutarou had fled as soon as Tetsurou’s voice rose and Kenma had joined him, both trembling, anxiously wiping each other’s tears under the blankets. They’d listened and listened but couldn’t make out the words and eventually, they’d heard the slam of a door. 

Tetsurou had never felt so livid before and had walked around the park a few times, listening to the cars go by and the snow crunch beneath his feet. The sounds of winter had begun to take root in the city and Tetsurou had returned home after an hour, chilled to the bone because he’d left without so much as a scarf or mittens, eyes red from _not crying_.

Keiji had stayed in the kitchen, also with red eyes from _not crying_ , and had accidentally baked four batches of cookies. He stares back at Tetsurou at the doorway for a moment before saying in a scratchy voice: “we’re out of butter.” And Tetsurou makes up for it by holding his arms out and hoping. Keiji makes up for it by slamming into him with less grace than expected and more force than bargained for and they both fall over in a pile of shame and apologies. They look for Kenma and Koutarou, only to find them asleep, exhausted by fear and anxiety and feel the guilt stab their lungs in swarms of little needles. An unspoken pact is made.

Tetsurou warms the fried chicken in their ancient microwave oven and Keiji sets the table, piling Tetsurou's books and Kenma's DS on the chair next to (mainly Koutarou's) folded clothes. They tell stories about their day (Koutarou, by far, has the best stories). There’s traces of them everywhere, Kenma thinks, even when they’re not here, in the rows of shoes next to the door, in the pot of coffee at the counter and the half finished mug at the sink, in the way they never have enough jam or cream for breakfast. Kenma finds bits of them in his hair (Koutarou's shampoo), his nails (Tetsurou's nail varnish), his clothes (they're actually Keiji's). 

_But_ , he muses, _having them here is better than anything, ever._

Outside, the rain turns to sleet. Kenma looks around at the table, between bites of chicken, and tries not to smile. Maybe he really is living his dream life.

_i carry your heart with me(i carry it in_

_my heart)i am never without it(anywhere_

_i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done_

_by only me is your doing,my darling)_

_\- e.e. cummings_

**Author's Note:**

> IT SAYS PUBLISHED ON THE 5TH BUT IT'S 6TH HERE I HAVE AN EXAM SO I WON'T BE HERE HAHAHAHAHAHAHA END ME thank u for ur time
> 
> i'm sorry this is ooc as fuck that's completely on me because  
> 1) i love bokuto too much to accidentally fuck him up (HE DESERVES BETTER)  
> 2) i needed akaashi to let loose  
> 3) kenma ,,,i love kenma ,,,fam let me hug this child  
> 4) PhD student!Kuroo thanks  
> 5) just,,, let me have this please n thank u
> 
> i duly apologise for any offence caused
> 
> buuuuut if u wanna hate on me ,,,hey i'm @iceandbrimstone over on the old tumb 
> 
> the title is from the twenty one pilots song "Ride"


End file.
